Launch event 26.3.2015: Codesign Journey Planner

Codesign, UX, Human centred design, and open innovation are proliferating rapidly. Finding a suited approach is hard as there is a method jungle out there. The problem is not finding just any approach, but sorting out which approach might suit you.

What: We are proud to invite you into a launch party of an interactive web application we have created for finding a suitable codesign approach to match your design context.

Why: Codesign, UX, Human centred design, and open innovation are proliferating rapidly. Finding a suited approach is hard as there is a method jungle out there.The problem is not finding just any approach, but sorting out which approach might suit you. This is not easy, because methods have emerged from separate but overlapping design and research disciplines ever since 1970s. Using the wrong method is a waste of money and resources. This can happen, for instance, if you do a field study, or a usability evaluation, without considering the state of the market or what the lead developer already knows about users.

Our solution: We have done three things to bring order into the methods jungle. First, we grouped a large body of methods into four groups: inspiration, investigation, cooperation, and community. Within these groups we positioned nine main codesign approaches. Second, we selected ten relevant dimensions for product and service development. These concern for instance product kind, use practices, and skills, and motivations of developers and users. Third, we created a model to match design approaches with development contexts.

Why this is not just another method selection app: This web app was launched in January 2015 and is going through first evaluation. We expect to fine-tune the recommendations over the next months, but we are confident that this is already something special. It is built on a 15-year research program on product and service development processes that has produced several PhDs, 4 books, and close to 50 research articles. The research has been done in close collaboration with product and service development companies to achieve ecological validity.